{"id":46632,"date":"2013-08-13T00:08:28","date_gmt":"2013-08-13T07:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=46632"},"modified":"2014-12-29T22:17:21","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T05:17:21","slug":"its-good-to-have-readers-who-can-do-the-heavy-lifting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2013\/08\/its-good-to-have-readers-who-can-do-the-heavy-lifting.html","title":{"rendered":"It’s Good to Have Readers Who Can Do the Heavy Lifting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019m pretty busy for the next week or so and can\u2019t check in in the comboxes as much as I\u2019d like.<\/p>\n

So when the umpteenth Traditionalist makes the case for his superiority to the rest of the Church:<\/p>\n

Those who argue for the superiority of the Traditional Latin Mass (whether they deem the NO valid or not) do so for reasons of its emphatically *measurable* doctrinal superiority. The orations of the old mass (over the course of an entire year) are doctrinally fuller and richer than those of the new mass, and teach the Catholic faith more authentically. The old mass is a greater didactic tool. This is not a matter of \u2018interpretation\u2019 (a less fancy word for \u2018hermeneutic\u2019): it\u2019s an empirical fact, and one that can be measured via a shared, objective standard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m grateful that the invaluable Lori Pieper <\/a>shows up to\u00a0write:<\/p>\n

OK, I\u2019ve pondered it for an hour and I give up. What is this marvelous \u201cshared, objective standard\u201d? Where is it? When was this extraordinary judgment made? And who were the judges? Because obviously to you the EF has already won. And why don\u2019t people know about this contest?<\/p>\n

Oh, because it never happened, of course. And as far as theology is concerned, the only conceivable \u201cshared, objective standard\u201d is the Magisterium of the Church itself. And you will wait a good long time, I think, before the Magisterium makes a pronouncement of the kind you want. No, the only thing that the Magisterium has said is that these are the two forms, both equally venerable, of the one Roman rite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, as various crazy people show up to \u00a0insist that it\u2019s not enough for gay Catholics to affirm and live the Church\u2019s teaching, but they must be further punished and subjected to litmus tests, interrogations,\u00a0and quizzes about their sex lives from combox inquisitors for their vocabulary choices, reader Dan C<\/a>. nails it:<\/p>\n

The issue is your double-standard.\u00a0 You require a confession from gay participants in a Christian conversation.\u00a0 They must indicate they are chaste (using the term SSA) or if they are unchaste (and use the term gay).\u00a0 It cannot be that the gay man can indicate he is Catholic and gay.\u00a0 You need to know more.\u00a0 Is he chaste, hence SSA and instead using ambivalent terminology that is confusing you, leading you to believe he may be have homosexual sexual relations.\u00a0 This is how you categorize them.\u00a0 You need to know their confessional sins about sex,\u00a0 Yet, this is unrequired of heterosexual men in conversation.\u00a0 You have no demand of a similar set of confessional statements indicating that these men are not masturbating, participating in an adulterous relationship, and avoiding internet pornography.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 The requirement that your curiosity about a gay man\u2019s sexual activity be satisfied, independent of his thoughts on any given topic, is not Catholic and these coded vocabulary demands are not Catholic.\u00a0 They just let you know someone\u2019s sexual behavior, and oddly, this curiosity only extends to gays.\u00a0 Not to heterosexuals, who could participate in any assortment of disordered sexual behaviors.<\/p>\n

Your seemingly insatiable desire to categorize folks as \u201cchaste gay Catholic\u201d and \u201cunchaste gay Catholic\u201d and \u201cheterosexual Catholic\u201d is the matter that should not be presented as Catholic for so so many reasons.\u00a0 You should stop misrepresenting Catholicism as such.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What these two discussion threads have in common is the Traditionalist and arch-conservative Catholic hostility to evangelism.\u00a0 In both cases, what is being addressed is the peculiar need some Catholics have to\u00a0limit, as far as possible, the access of other people to grace and to set themselves apart from the\u00a0unclean.\u00a0 The Traditionalist with his need to declare that\u00a0the vast majority of other Catholics are living inferior spiritual lives and the sexual obsessive with his need for passwords and codes and added burdens of suspicion for this particular form of conscupiscence have in common this need to be more rigorous than the Church herself.\u00a0 If a gay person\u00a0says he believes and professes the Church\u2019s teaching\u2013including her moral teaching\u2013what the hell is the problem?\u00a0 Such people should be welcomed and supported and we should thank God for them because they are not only disciples, they are apostles bearing witness to the rest of the gay community that it can and should be done.<\/p>\n

And that, I increasingly suspect, is<\/em> the problem for the More Pure Than the Church crowd.\u00a0 Traditionalism is, as I discover again and again, deeply hostile to Evangelization because evangelization leads to converts and converts are people from Outside who get into the bunker of Fortress Katolicus and mess everything up<\/a>.\u00a0 More and more I come to believe that the core conflict between Traditionalism and the Council is a fundamental hostility to the Council\u2019s evangelical orientation toward mission.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m pretty busy for the next week or so and can\u2019t check in in the comboxes as much as I\u2019d like. So when the umpteenth Traditionalist makes the case for his superiority to the rest of the Church: Those who argue for the superiority of the Traditional Latin Mass (whether they deem the NO valid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-46632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-new-evangelization"],"yoast_head":"\nIt's Good to Have Readers Who Can Do the Heavy Lifting<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm pretty busy for the next week or so and can't check in in the comboxes as much as I'd like. 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